A couple of random thoughts to start with. Firstly, does anyone have any good ideas for sports we can play on the freighter to keep ourselves occupied and fit? Most of the ones we have come up with suffer from drabacks such as the ball falling into the ocean, or being blown into the ocean.Secondly, on the Trans-Siberian, Dave had discussed with Aussie Matt the possibility of dying our hair, given that we were away for log enough for it not to matter too much...

A couple of random thoughts to start with. Firstly, does anyone have any good ideas for sports we can play on the freighter to keep ourselves occupied and fit? Most of the ones we have come up with suffer from drabacks such as the ball falling into the ocean, or being blown into the ocean.Secondly, on the Trans-Siberian, Dave had discussed with Aussie Matt the possibility of dying our hair, given that we were away for log enough for it not to matter too much...

Greetings from Xian. We are spending a couple of days in the ancient capital of China, which was the imperial capital from 1000 BC to 1000 AD. It's the only remaining walled city in China (and it's a very big and impressive wall too).We had some fun catching the overnight train from Beijing. Our guide book (now thoroughly discredited) told us that bus 122 went between the Beijing central station (where we ended up) to the West station (a distance of about...

A last update before we leave for Xian. Today we had a hectic day of exploring. We started off by thankfully waking to find that all our washing had dried (it was washed for us about 48 hours earlier....) It was then off towards the Forbidden City to check it out. When we got down there, we found oursleves in some charming gardens, whose tranquility was very much at odds with the surrounding hustle and bustle.We spent most of the rest of the day checking out the ...

Photos now uploaded!We have trundled into Beijing passing through Northern China and being shunted down past the great wall on the way. First impressions of China are greenery and trees (after brown  grass and sand in Mongolia), huge big chemical plants, acres of smog - in fact not able to see any blue sky and a grand scale of labour avaibale - over 1000 railway workers working in a team to replace sleepers.After arrival, we set about finding ...